Avalanche Looms

 Irene Johnson in her studio, White Iron Lake, Ely, Mn, ca. 1982
My mom sewed for me, and both of my sisters.   In the 60's, girls weren't allowed to wear pants to school.  We wore cotton dresses, with gathered skirts, button-up backs, pockets, rick-rack, and bow back ties. She liked to add crisp white collars, and...

Make do.  Get by.  Take what you get, and be still.  Words my grandmother spoke over coffee in her kitchen in Northern Minnesota.   Or, other words my sisters and I heard in the kitchen, hiding under the table while my mother and her friends coffee-klatched...

Almost forty years ago, when we bought the farm we still live on in Avalanche, we could see there
had been a little cow barn, across the spring creek. A stone foundation dug into the creek bank and the silo base, and silo top, were all that was left of it.  We put a wire fence around that half acre, and put in a couple of sheep and some geese. The...

My mom and I are at the house at the lake where she still lives with my dad, sitting at her kitchen table after lunch.  My mom is looking at the Ely Echo, when a story catches her attention that she starts to read aloud to me: "Man Arrested for Killing...